If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

I agree, maybe even a small bonus on land/naval tech investments depending on sliders.

Bridling the Horses of Saint Mark.
"Full scan. The Emperor protects. But it does no harm to double check."
Captain Severus of the Ultramarines
Do you want to be blessed by the True Pantheon? Do you want to be favoured by the Four like a true son? Sign up now and undertake the Pilgrimage!!!
"They're living in the tropics. They're well fed. They've got everything they could possibly want" Cool story bro

Last Monday on Testing Ground I have seen that the Plague mechanics works very well, the problem is that the AI never uses a magistrate to remove the plague.

That brings some long-time AI controlled provs to go from 30-40k population to 5-6k.

Telling the AI to remove the plague ASAP could be a good improvement .

There are several posts in the thread I need to answer to, I am hoping to be able to elaborate on those tomorrow. As for the bit above, there's a few lines of code which consider the AI's choice with regards to plagues:

I haven't added chance factors in the "quarantine" decisions though, chiefly because I was exploring the AI's propensity to build. I also wondered whether missionaries should provide an additional alternative to magistrates, with regard to quarantines — ultimately I discarded that option. If you come up with a rational and conservative (aimed at saving magistrates for buildings) AI logic, I'll include it in the next patch and test it.

I am surprised a province of 50,000 has been reduced to 5,000 — population growth rates are decennial, and our test campaign has lasted but one century. Can you pinpoint which provinces showed that evolution.

Several in Castille, Pisa or Siena in Italy, I'll give a closer look tomorrow.
It's quite simple to see them, as many of them -and surely all OPMs- kept the Nat.Focus population growth from 1399 and 1535, and have a stunningly lesser population.

Siena started with 12k people, had a plague in the 1510s and ended up with 24k inhabitants in 1535, when our session ended. All in all, the province size doubled.
Pisa's population is initially set at 29k. There was one plague in the 1480s, yet the province grew to 37k by 1535.

I have had a brief look at Iberia but didn't find anything extraordinary.

The goal, with plagues, is to:

a) hinder most provinces to ever reach the 999,999 cap (engine's limit and manpower bonus limit) and the 100,000 cap (production units limit) — so that a population maximisation strategy becomes valuable (canals, tolerance, national focus moving)b) reduce overall population growths, while allowing the player to choose where growth should be favoured, as population growth has increased significantly the latest expansionsc) make "canals" (which ought to be renamed to "sanitation") a relevant building

"Sanitation", or "Canals" as they are still called, increase the MTTH by 150% — it's the most significant factor in reducing chances to be "plagued". Since the base is high (a century), the factor is actually determinant. But, as you remarked, canals don't remove the possibility of plagues.

As may notice, production efficiency (threshold associated to medical breakthrough) and natural scientists also have positive effects and decrease plague chances.

As it seems that no matter what i do my naval force limit shrinks over time. Infact i got less naval forcelimits than back in 100 years, from 24 to 22. Also it seems that randomly my naval forcelimits shrinks, even with the trade leader on naval goods.

I also had a event that gives +2 tax on gelere, and after i took it, there was no impact at all to my forcelimits. Also if i compare with hansa that has a overall taxbase on naval provinces that is inferiror to mine, it has 35 naval limit which is more than 50% of what burgundy has.

I also tried to conquer bremen to test naval limits. If Burgundy has bremen which is basetax 8, it gains 1 naval limit more. If hansa looses Bremen it loses 3 naval limit. Looking at the modifiers i am -3 land 2 Naval. But this seems not justified, as i got also a bonus of +10 from trading naval goods. So my total malus is -8% and Hansas total bonus should be +16%. But this is a difference of only 24%. Still the naval forcelimits are more than 50% bigger.

Also by conquering from Normandy to Bremen all naval provinces, the total forcelimits are still around 21-22. It seems like owning all that provinces nets a total of 1.5-2 maximum naval limits per province.

Fra', this is a vanilla question: the mod doesn't, can't, change the engine's mechanics. All that was done was altering static force limits from buildings, national ideas and modifiers from the policy slider — you can easily track what difference they make.

You say that Bremen, base tax eight, gives you +1 naval force limit — that sounds fine. You'd gain +4 naturally, but since it's not Burgundian that's a +2 and since you have negative naval limits modifiers, or a different religion, it must be rounded to +1. As for Bremen's contribution to the Hansa's naval force limits, the province probably has a workshop on it, which you must lose on conquering the province: so it's +4.5 naturally, possibly wrong religion +2.75, but increased by the naval policy slider or the trading in modifier — thus amounting to the +3 you report.

The usual problem with Burgundy and its naval force limits is that its primary culture is Burgundian, so your core coastal provinces (Dutch, Flemish, etc.) will net you half the normal naval limits. You've also recently converted in our campaign: wrong religion halves your naval force limits, regardless of tolerance. As for yearly fluctuations, they may derive from your coastal COT expanding or contracting and thus changing level.

after a chat with silk he proposed me to elaborate more on this issue, and to seek other opinions.

Reasons to alter naval force limits regarding to wrong religion:
1) Wrong religion should affect naval limits only if there is no tolerance, we could set +3 as maximum possible naval limits, and then scaling down for every level of tolerance at a rate of -10%.
2) Having wrong religion that affects naval limits will destroy the naval limits of nation that have ecumenism, as it will over time turn all provinces you own in to heretic.
3) I do not see any valid reason why wrong religion should affect that hard naval force limits, in comparison if you have wrong religion and no tolerance you will lose manpower, but never 50%.
4) It effectively hinders a tolerant nation to play naval.

Well I would say for some of the fringenations that might be interested in converting to a different religion this would be a huge boost and make it much easier to do so. One of the prices for IE Morroco or Byzantium for converting is that you temporarily sacrifice your fleet until your provinces is converted which is a huge disadvantage for those two nations, thus making conversion unattractive.

This suggestion opens up new possibilities for those fringenations but I'm not entirely sure that it's a good idea without adding additional costs to converting in general which would hurt everyone else.

So far in Testing Grounds I have seen the chance (thanks to the trade overhaul) to make profitable Trade Agreements.

They give, ofc, like in vanilla, a -2% Trade Efficiency.

I think that given the current system, Trade Agreements are profitable and should be highly subject to breaking every 7-8 years or so, especially in times of war, to be remade as soon as there is opportunity of profit.

To allow such profit to exist, I propose to reduce the Trade Agreement -2% TE penalty to -1% TE penalty.

(-2% means you'll probably have one at most, since having -4% would nullify the grounds to have even one, according to my general calculations)

It would also add a very underrated and forgotten feature to the field, imo very handy now that the trade system is much simpler and not slave of free trade.

"Scissor is overpowered, Rock is fine" - Paper

"If he turns you the other cheek, it means you did not hit him hard enough" - from the "Gospel of Checco"

in general i like this idea of reducing trade agreements malus, but i have to think of a possible abuse first. Like giving too much advantage to free trading nations. Like if we have 3 free traders and they all make a agreements between them they have pretty much no competition at all and might dominate trade. Also i am not fully convinced if it pays off to make trade agreements between free traders and mercantilistic nations.

in general i like this idea of reducing trade agreements malus, but i have to think of a possible abuse first. Like giving too much advantage to free trading nations. Like if we have 3 free traders and they all make a agreements between them they have pretty much no competition at all and might dominate trade. Also i am not fully convinced if it pays off to make trade agreements between free traders and mercantilistic nations.

Well, it's pretty easy to see beforehand whether it pays or not.

It pays if and only if those with trade agreements trade in the same market (no more no less than a Trade League, with whom we are familiar).

Free traders making trade agreements between them just damage themselves imho, because they'd get an edge only over other free traders NOT having a Trade Agreement with them (something hard to happen).

Free traders having agreements with each and every other free traders would still lose on a market of a Mercantilist, as its 95+% cannot be changed with or without a trade agreement.

So if everybody makes a TA with everyone, all of them lose money, as their TE is also converted in money and the presence of everyone in all market would be the same.

Mercantilists have no reasons to make a TA with another mercantilist, since they fear no one in their CoTs and have no decent chance to trade abroad anyway.

The only way it's profitable is on a mercantilist+free trader scenario, or, very limitedly, free trader+free trader scenario, so I think it cannot be abused by definition.

i.e. 3 Free traders might want to have sometimes a TA to temporarily 'cut out' another free trader from the markets, and the deal would be broken as soon as this target has been damaged and there is no reason to keep an expensive -3% TE (currently -6%) penalty.

No way to abuse it imho, it could only create new trade/diplomatic opportunities.

"Scissor is overpowered, Rock is fine" - Paper

"If he turns you the other cheek, it means you did not hit him hard enough" - from the "Gospel of Checco"

Siena started with 12k people, had a plague in the 1510s and ended up with 24k inhabitants in 1535, when our session ended. All in all, the province size doubled.
Pisa's population is initially set at 29k. There was one plague in the 1480s, yet the province grew to 37k by 1535.

I have had a brief look at Iberia but didn't find anything extraordinary.

The goal, with plagues, is to:

a) hinder most provinces to ever reach the 999,999 cap (engine's limit and manpower bonus limit) and the 100,000 cap (production units limit) — so that a population maximisation strategy becomes valuable (canals, tolerance, national focus moving)b) reduce overall population growths, while allowing the player to choose where growth should be favoured, as population growth has increased significantly the latest expansionsc) make "canals" (which ought to be renamed to "sanitation") a relevant building

Castilla la Vieja, Badajoz and Tangiers are almost at colony level, with a -12/15% Pop growth.

If the AI leaves the Plagued provs to ruin, they will be useless for the player when he takes over (especially if the room to expand is little and each prov is precious)

"Scissor is overpowered, Rock is fine" - Paper

"If he turns you the other cheek, it means you did not hit him hard enough" - from the "Gospel of Checco"

Since we are preparing a 2nd campaign with the mod, I wanted to propose the following:

-Cores taking 40 years to get instead of 50 years.

Why?

Because expansion can hardly be done without them, and taking enemy land puts you at risk of retailation with a Reconquest CB, often with you asking 'a 50-years NAP' after many wars with land cession, to allow the building of a core.

(ofc many times the enemy core will not disappear once yours is formed, but at least you can get census giving you more reasons to hold the conquests)

40 years would also be the time required to lose a core on foreign culture.

Imo it would mean that many times you wouldn't ask a NAP longer than 40 years, as opposed to 50, making the game more dynamic.

And btw, with most campaigns not going over 1600-1650, 50 years look very long to me (in MP, not SP)

"Scissor is overpowered, Rock is fine" - Paper

"If he turns you the other cheek, it means you did not hit him hard enough" - from the "Gospel of Checco"

actually i liked very much the idea of implementing variable core acquisition time. But in the end, i do not see very much the benefit. Giving shorter core time could only make more easy to kill minors. Who would benefit the most would only be major powers. What do other think?

I launched save game from my MP campaign at 1650, and here is my few quick thoughts about mod:

1) From one side i like that it lowers MP given from buildings. Before we had poland and Austria with bigest MP, after changes Russia is first, then OE then Hab and Pol and i think its good.
But problem is that naval countries have again small MP and without building they have no chance at land fighting, especially countries like GBR or SCA. The question is if it's ok or not ?

2) Incomes are lowered by about 25%, which i find nice.

3) -50% stability cost for church_attendence in my opinion makes this idea very powerful maybe too much. Especially with deciosion like blashpemy_laws (-15% stabcost , -1cultural tradion).
This is very powerful combination, you can take
church -50%,
blasphemy -15%
+5 narowinded (or -5 serfdom) -35%
And you have 0 stability costs
Ofcourse there are many other ways:
trading in wine -15%
max prestige -10%
etc
Easy to make countries having stability costs 0 or very low, when having no war_exhaution

For expample i took my Poland from campaing. it has some negative stability decision already taken:
Indulgence, militia act, superintendents, 4,8 infamy - making it together +35,7% to stabcost
But i have already
from wine -15%
from school -3%
from bishop -10%
from prestige -8,8%
together -36,8%

I changed in save to have +5 narrowinded , 0 free subjects (-35% to stabcost)
i took blasphemy and idea (-65%)
And now all my provinces have -045 or -0,90 stabcost

Ofcourse its just quick expample, what i wanted to show that from some1 making thinking while making country its easy to have a non stabcost country, even with a WE

4) Free traders have -50% compete chance in thier own cot, why ?, i dont see reason for this, in my opionion its too big number

1) As the overall MP is lower, there are no issues as everyone is able to field less units. Also you have to take in to account the use of mercenaries. It's pretty important now, and also later on. In a war in 1550 i was able to fight for 10 years at 0 MP pool because of mercenaries.

2) Nice that you noticed it

3) Stability is to me not a big issue, because if you go free subjects you gain something like +35% stab cost, Same for Innovation. Also almost every decision that there is makes you gain Stability cost. If you check our last campaign savegame you can observe that stability is a issue for most countries. Also i think it's a design choice that going narrowinded should have benefits too if compared to innovation.

Also if you take in to account the -1 revolt risk idea, you got more stability cost added. We might want to test it out in the campaign, and change it if we we that it's too exploitable.

Last point, you do not want to take a -culture decision, as it is very difficult to gain. Probably i would take bureaucracy instead of blasphemy.

4) It's not -50% in their own cot, it's -50% to the bonus they get to trade in their cot given by owned provinces.